Cardiovascular disease remains the primary cause of morbidity and mortality in the developed world. There continues to be a need for outstanding scientist-educators to increase our basic understanding of cardiovascular disease and to translate this information into clinical application. The Training Program in "Molecular Physiology of the Cardiovascular System" (MFCS) at Baylor College of Medicine is a multidisciplinary program with 32 participating faculty from 7 basic science and 9 clinical departments. The MFCS training program has trained 32 predoctoral and 68 postdoctoral trainees since its inception in 1989. Currently, the mentors are primarily located at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM), Rice University (RU), MD Anderson Cancer Center, Methodist Hospital, and the Texas A&M Health Sciences Center Institute for Biosciences and Biotechnology (IBT). The major goal for our program is to train biomedical scientists (5 predoctoral and 7 postdoctoral trainees) to work at the interface of basic and clinical research in one of four specialized themes, related to cardiovascular research. These themes include: 1) Electrophyslology & excitability, 2) Development and stem cells, 3) Stroke and cerebrovascular disease, and 4) Tissue engineering and novel therapeutic strategies. The strong collaborative research infrastructure at Baylor College of Medicine and partner institutions in the Texas Medical Center, and the diverse background of our mentors (basic scientists and practicing clinicians), provide unique resources for the trainees affiliated with the MFCS training program. The MFCS trainees will participate in an interdisciplinary training program comprised of didactic courses, grant writing workshops, journal clubs, seminar series, ethics training, and regular interactions with training faculty. Moreover, the pre- and postdoctoral fellows will be trained as leaders of teams of scientists and physicians that collaborate in translational research.